John Linton
......thus giving emphasis to the observation that:
"Democracy is the worst form of government.."
(Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons, November 11, 1947).While I believe I may have expressed the view, more than once I think, that the current 'federal government' is as inept a bunch of ill educated sub-mediocrity to ever pose as such an entity there is and remains the fact that they were, apparently, 'voted' by a majority of the Australian population in to those positions. That may only be a further condemnation of "democracy" as a form of government as also offered by WSC a little later when he said:
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter:
If you prefer a change of continent, Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying:
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
So, it's obvious that there are many shortcomings of living in a democracy, and I think that's particularly true at this particular moment in time in Australia, but the fact remains that more than 50% of Australian voters have consigned all Australians to the vagaries, grandstanding inanity and stupidities of the current 'government' for a period of around three years and that's it - you can't change your current 'government' or its stupidities until the next election (which apparently, according to the recent opinion polls, will result in the electorate giving the current fools a second period of three years)
These, I assume cynical, views were brought to mind when I read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/26/technology/AP-TEC-Australia-Internet-Filter.html?_r=1
So "censorship" and "removal of our freedoms" and all the other claptrap quoted in that NYT article are just plain juvenile and as equally stupid as the votes that put the idiots implementing the stupidity in a position to do it in the first place if those protestors think that somehow they've been hard done by. Australians have "made their bed and they must lie on it".
Get over it - move on.
I don't know when life, or at least 'life' for so many foolish people, got so trivial that so many column inches could be devoted to the non-event known as the "Internet filtering trials" but it seems that people who use the internet have a lower IQ than the people who vote in Australia (or perhaps there is a correlation between a Labor voter and low IQs or Labor voters and the inability to either learn from even recent history or to actually read the election 'manifestos' of the party they decide to vote for?).
People who use the internet should know, among many other obvious facts, that:
1) The democratically elected Australian government of the day has the confirmed by vote right and obligation to implement its 'mandate'.
2) Attempting to prevent access to any address on the internet is not possible for any internet user of even modest knowledge and 'skill'
3) Attempting to ban access to web sites that are related to child pornography (even if that is impossible) is not something that any sentient entity should even waste one word commenting about
4) The, democratically elected, government of the day in Australia will demonstrate (via opposition scrutiny and the Senate) that it's "ban lists" are created against agreed criteria as authorised by the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED representatives of all Australians (whether they give a damn or not about internet ban lists)
So any 'ban list' will be based on what each voter's repesentative agrees to in the democratically elected parliament of the Australian people.
The fact that any such ban list will be pointless, for the most part, in that anyone who has elementary skills will not be hindered by it in any case makes the current columnn inches even harder to understand.
So, all these 'protestors' must have a paucity of brain cells in that they can't grasp the two essentials involved in this process which, as I understand them are:
1) 50.0001% or more voters in Australia voted for a ban list and it's now past the time to 'protest' against 'the will of the people'.
2) No ban list can possibly work so, irrespective of what transpires, nothing will change.
If, and it remains very much an 'if', legislation is passed that requires ISPs to implement some sort of filtering then, because it is a law, then it will be put in place. If you don't like the law, or its end results then you can vote out the current government at the next election (assuming that a prospective alternative government promises to remove the legislation you object to) or you can emigrate. Alternatively you can either do without access to the 'banned sites' or simply log in to a forum/web site that tells you how to circumvent whatever filtering has been put in place.
Whatever happens no-one, and I mean absolutely no-one, will be negatively affected by anything that any government may or may not try to do in respect of eliminating access to the internet addresses that currently exist or will exist in the future.
PS: I doubt whether anyone will be able to guess where this description of democracy comes from:
"DEMOCRACY - A government
of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any
other form of "direct" expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude
toward property is communistic – negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
whether is be based upon deliberation or governed by passion,
prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Results in demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy."